CAPE TOWN - The 24th annual Investing in African Mining Indaba has seen the number of women delegates, speakers and panelists double-up compared from the previous years, Noluthando Gosa, a member of the advisory board for the Mining Indaba said on Tuesday.

Gosa said the next few days of the indaba, more women will be utilising different stages, deliberating on the mining sector matters.

On the first day of the Indaba, the Minister of Mineral Resources, Mosebenzi Zwane said that there's a noticeable gender transformation in the sector, but he can not say they are not in a position to say they are happy with the current women representation in mining.

The charter provides a framework for the transformation of the mining and minerals industry by, among others, facilitating the entry of historically disadvantaged South Africans, including women, into the mining industry. When it was promulgated in 2002, the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act required women to hold 10percent of so-called core mining jobs.

Even on the other segments of the sector, such as energy and utilities, the gender balance is still a challenge. The Women in Power and Utilities Index (2016) tracked the number of women in the boardrooms of the world’s largest utilities in revenue, and it was established that there are 16% women on power and utilities boards, with progress at an extremely slow increase of only 1% over three years.

In his speech on Monday, Zwane has noted that the Unemployment remains a concern in South Africa, and in 2017 it reached 27,7%.

"While the industry did not breach the half a million mark in employment, it did register a modest net growth. We have over R220 billion rand worth of investments in the project pipeline, which includes PGMs, industrial minerals, energy and non-ferrous metals, demonstrating that South Africa remains acritical investment destination. We have bountiful reserves of platinum, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, all crucial for industrialisation," he said.